Beauty
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: He's been all around the world for S.H.I.E.L.D. and on these trips, he's seen beauties of the world amid the chaos that tried to consume it. But he's never seen true beauty until his daughter is placed in his arms for the first time.


**Beauty**

He's been all around the world for S.H.I.E.L.D. and on these trips, he's seen beauties of the world amid the chaos that tried to consume it.

He's seen the beauty of a sunrise across the African savannah, and the beauty of it setting over the Grand Canyon in the middle of June. He's seen the beauty of oceans lapping sandy shores and the bare feet of the woman he loves walking through them. He's seen the beauty of the sky after a thunder storm where the clouds are threateningly dark despite the shining patches of blue sky in between, and the snow covered mountains overlooking nothing but endless white. He's seen ancient ruins even if he hasn't had time to stop and appreciate them, and he's treked through rainforests and open land filled with wildlife and plants that couldn't possible be ignored for their display.

But he's never seen true beauty until his daughter is placed in his arms for the first time.

When his baby girl is handed to him, wrapped in a blanket, still fresh from birth, his hands that were shaking for the last hour of his wife's labour come to a firm stop. The hands that hold this precious life didn't tremble for fear of dropping her, determination keeping her so incredibly safe against him that he daren't even try to pass her to another person. A doctor hands him this tiny form that he half-created within his wife's body - one night in Paris on a mission, they decide eventually - and he looks down at her scrunched face and open, screaming mouth, and God, he just never wants to let her go.

Fears melt away as he brings this swaddled child against his chest and finds that she's barely enough to fill his arms. She's small, even for a baby, but they assure him that she's perfectly healthy all the same. She's certainly got healthy lungs. Her screams are filling the room, but he barely hears them as anything more than his daughter's voice. Her voice, cementing the fact that she was here. She cries and screams her displeasure at the birth, and he places his lips against her head, inhaling the new-baby smell of his first born child. His child. His baby. His daughter.

Over the smooth curve of her head he meets his wife's eyes, exhausted and drained while the doctors clean her up so that she can get some rest. A twenty-two hour labour hasn't taken the spark out of her eyes, even though they're still teary from when they placed the seconds-old wriggling child against her chest. He felt a rush as he watched a three second exchange between instructions to push and then she was being lifted from his wife's body and placed on her chest as if it was something that had happened to her a thousand times already, and that cry, that first newborn baby cry had broken the wall that she had spent her entire life putting between her and the world.

He went over to her side, their daughter in his arms. "She's _perfect_," he told her, not at all surprised or ashamed to hear that his voice is thick with tears that are just starting to show themselves. "She's so perfect."

And despite their endless_ it's a boy/it's a gir_l arguement, of which he fell onto the boy side, she is perfect. She's got ten fingers, ten toes, a beating heart and her mother's red hair. Or at least, she will have. It's a dark brown at the moment but he can see a light tint around the edges that may not be as furiously red as her mothers, but perhaps, just maybe, one day it will be. She's got his nose and chin, so he thinks that she'll have his smile, something that Natasha was certain she wanted her child to have, male or female, but there's something about the shape of her eyes already that makes him so sure that when the baby dark blue eyes start to change they'll end up green and sparkling. She'll be a replica of her mother with his smile. How can that be anything less than perfect.

He sits down in the chair at his wife's side and returns his focus to the baby. She's starting to quiet down now, her tiny face looking around even though her eyes haven't opened properly yet. "My baby girl," he whispers, bringing her closer again so that he could kiss her once more. "Oh, _God_, I love you so much." His eyes turned to Natasha who was watching him with half-lidded eyes. "Is this even _possible_?" he asked. "To love someone so quickly?"

Tired beyond belief, she just nodded at him, reaching over an arm to place it on his.

"I _love_ her," he mumbled again, this time looking down at the child. A tear fell down his cheek and landed on the blanket that his daughter was swaddled in. He wiped it and turned to his wife once more.

"Clint?" she asked, a small frown at the fact he was crying more now.

"Thank you," he choked out, standing once again so that he could lean over and kiss her, one hand smoothing her hair back while the other still cradled their daughter against him securely - a smooth simple action as if he had been doing it all his life. "Thank you, for her."

And Natasha smiles at him, kisses their daughter, and as he passes the baby girl to her mother, that rush of beauty hits him again. His wife and his daughter in the same embrace - both his, both perfect - and he has to sit on the side of the mattress before the overwhelming urge to fall to the ground hits him for the fifth time that day. She whispers words of love and adoration to their newborn child and he wipes his cheeks again, kissing the top of her head and their daughters.

He had seen mountains, and rivers, and happiness, and astonishing sights, but he hadn't seen true beauty until he'd seen them both.


End file.
